Though there is some debate as to who first said it (I've most often heard it attributed to Augustine), some Christian thinker once famously said: The church is a whore, but she's my mother.
God once commanded the prophet Hosea to take an adulterous wife, so that their marriage might serve as a picture of the relationship between God and His people.
I've been thinking a lot this week about the church and have asked, not for the first time, what is God doing with her? He could do so much better! Why stay faithful to one who, as Sartre famously stated, "sells her favors to the rich." One who chases after lesser lovers and is never content to simply be with God.
Put another way, why does God keep putting up with me? I take more than my fair share, even when He commands me not to, I am given over to greed and lust and anger and apathy and pettiness and ugliness and selfishness.
Derek Webb puts it this way:
So could you love this bastard child?
Though I don't trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And the other in your side
I'm too easily distracted, too easily sedated, too easily satisfied and pacified and pleased.
And, for that, I repent.
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